High Guard 3

[Glen Allen Mcinnes]

Sand casters are a hold-over from the book 2 rules when everyone was building ships less than 1K tons they never botherd to scale for larger ships (as far as i can tell) as they had the new armor rules in high gard and nastier weapons for capital ships to shoot at each other. a fair house rule would be that each canaster provides the listed protection per every 500-1000 tons (apx.) of starship and the "sand" is held in place by the ships EM & grav feilds also having "sand" depolied would make you a bigger sencor target and may distort your sensor imiage making it harder to tell who or what you are (with the right kind of sand) with out IFF.

well thats my 0.05Cr (With GST & rounding)

 

[The Oz]

There was some scaling of the sand rules in HG through the "battery" rule. A 30-caster sand battery puts out 1500 kilograms of sand in one salvo.

Your idea about scaling the protection to the size of the ship makes more sense than anything else I've ever heard of.

 

[The Oz]

There was some scaling of the sand rules in HG through the "battery" rule. A 30-caster sand battery puts out 1500 kilograms of sand in one salvo.

Your idea about scaling the protection to the size of the ship makes more sense than anything else I've ever heard of.

 

[Glen Allen Mcinnes]

True OZ but I'v never met a Gear-head how used more than one weapon slot on one trrunt for sand, although I'v meat a cupple of tac-heads (tactical players) how did the one truunt battrys for ease of construction & use or put them on diffrant turrnts (on smaller ships) to provent losing their sand protection to one hit.

 

[Glen Allen Mcinnes]

True OZ but I'v never met a Gear-head how used more than one weapon slot on one trrunt for sand, although I'v meat a cupple of tac-heads (tactical players) how did the one truunt battrys for ease of construction & use or put them on diffrant turrnts (on smaller ships) to provent losing their sand protection to one hit.

 

[The Oz]

When building in Book 2 or making HG ships with mixed turrets, I normally don't use more than one slot in a turret for sand, myself. I prefer twin pulse laser and one sandcaster for armed civilian ships, and a mix of twin beam laser and one sand or twin beam laser and one missile for military vessels.

 

[The Oz]

When building in Book 2 or making HG ships with mixed turrets, I normally don't use more than one slot in a turret for sand, myself. I prefer twin pulse laser and one sandcaster for armed civilian ships, and a mix of twin beam laser and one sand or twin beam laser and one missile for military vessels.

 

[Glen Allen Mcinnes]

Fair enugh OZ for ships less than 1K tons but when your dealing with multi kiloton or even megaton crusers and captial shipsand ther laser deffence consists of one sand caster amounst their hundreads of turrants and hundrads of tons of bay weapons its starting to get a tad silly

 

[Glen Allen Mcinnes]

Fair enugh OZ for ships less than 1K tons but when your dealing with multi kiloton or even megaton crusers and captial shipsand ther laser deffence consists of one sand caster amounst their hundreads of turrants and hundrads of tons of bay weapons its starting to get a tad silly

 

[The Oz]

Yes, but in HG you can't have mixed turrets on ships above 1000 dtons. Also HG combat brings the battery rules into effect and trying to stop a 30-weapon beam laser battery with one sandcaster is not possible (assuming equal computers).

However, I still think that your idea about scaling sandcaster protection to the size of the ship is a good idea, especially for Book 2 combat. Requiring one sand cloud per 200 dtons of ship to be protected might be the right ratio.

For HG combat a rule for scaling sand protection to the size of the ship is not really needed since the battery rules (and the way sand is allocated against specific hits) give the same basic effect without any need for modification.

 

[The Oz]

Yes, but in HG you can't have mixed turrets on ships above 1000 dtons. Also HG combat brings the battery rules into effect and trying to stop a 30-weapon beam laser battery with one sandcaster is not possible (assuming equal computers).

However, I still think that your idea about scaling sandcaster protection to the size of the ship is a good idea, especially for Book 2 combat. Requiring one sand cloud per 200 dtons of ship to be protected might be the right ratio.

For HG combat a rule for scaling sand protection to the size of the ship is not really needed since the battery rules (and the way sand is allocated against specific hits) give the same basic effect without any need for modification.

 

[robject]

Oz brings up another issue I've been thinking about, and that's the idea of batteries. Batteries are an excellent way of managing the large number of guns on large ships, and a great way to measure, mix, and match combat between vessels of wildly differing sizes and capabilities.

Surely, then, aren't sandcasters groupable into batteries?

And whereas Book 2 is sadly deficient in scalability, High Guard excels. The logical solution is to use the best of both worlds: a system which presents an index of modular components combined with rules that take grouping and scaling into account.

In fact, I recall a Freelance Traveller article that introduced drive component groupings into Book 2... essentially a "Drive Factor" to support ships larger than 5kt.

I'm starting to think that Factors can be useful for more than just weapons...

 

[robject]

Oz brings up another issue I've been thinking about, and that's the idea of batteries. Batteries are an excellent way of managing the large number of guns on large ships, and a great way to measure, mix, and match combat between vessels of wildly differing sizes and capabilities.

Surely, then, aren't sandcasters groupable into batteries?

And whereas Book 2 is sadly deficient in scalability, High Guard excels. The logical solution is to use the best of both worlds: a system which presents an index of modular components combined with rules that take grouping and scaling into account.

In fact, I recall a Freelance Traveller article that introduced drive component groupings into Book 2... essentially a "Drive Factor" to support ships larger than 5kt.

I'm starting to think that Factors can be useful for more than just weapons...

 

[The Oz]

Sigg and I did quite a bit of discussion on things we like and dislike about HG and scaling issues.

It's in an old thread on the Fleets part of the board. I can find a link if you're interested but it was a long thread with many side discussions.

 

[The Oz]

Sigg and I did quite a bit of discussion on things we like and dislike about HG and scaling issues.

It's in an old thread on the Fleets part of the board. I can find a link if you're interested but it was a long thread with many side discussions.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Well, personally I was always dissatisfied with rolling huge numbers of batteries to so little general effect. I've been mulling over the idea of allowing batteries to be massed for grouped firing. This would vastly accelerate combat and make huge numbers of batteries a real danger instead of the small threat (not non-existant, just small).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Well, personally I was always dissatisfied with rolling huge numbers of batteries to so little general effect. I've been mulling over the idea of allowing batteries to be massed for grouped firing. This would vastly accelerate combat and make huge numbers of batteries a real danger instead of the small threat (not non-existant, just small).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by robject:
Surely, then, aren't sandcasters groupable into batteries?

Sandcasters can be grouped in batteries. Why would you think they couldn't be given existing published examples with batteries of sandcasters?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by robject:
Surely, then, aren't sandcasters groupable into batteries?

Sandcasters can be grouped in batteries. Why would you think they couldn't be given existing published examples with batteries of sandcasters?

 

[robject]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by robject:
Surely, then, aren't sandcasters groupable into batteries?

Sandcasters can be grouped in batteries. Why would you think they couldn't be given existing published examples with batteries of sandcasters? </font>[/QUOTE]Because my brain wasn't working...